Yesterday, I blogged about the migration activities to get to TFS 2015 RC2, but I was still stuck at an error during new Team Project creation.

Looking into the logs it looked like there was some kind of issue during the upload of the first Reporting Services report “Bug Status” (part of the latest TFS 2015 Agile process template).

First I thought there was something wrong with permissions on the Reporting Services site because I also applied a certificate to offer accessibility via https, but that wasn’t it. All seemed to be setup correctly. A sign to look further into the details of the Bug Status .rdl report definition and why it couldn’t be correctly uploaded to the Reporting Services site. After downloading the process template from the Team Project Collection and opening the report with notepad, I knew I was getting closer to the root cause.

As shown in the picture above, the (default TFS 2015) Data Source mentioned in the report definition did not exist in the Report Server database after the migration from TFS 2010 SP1. In the TFS 2010 timeframe, all report defintions were linked to a “2010” Data Source.

Instead of renaming the existing Data Sources (that would break the existing reports, created from a TFS 2010 Team Project), I duplicated the entries to provide extra Data Sources with the expected names for usage with TFS 2015.

Today I got the opportunity to upgrade a customer from TFS 2010 SP1 to TFS 2015. As blogged by Brian Harry a few days ago, the RTM release of TFS 2015 (not Visual Studio 2015!) is delayed (for a good reason!) and in order to further test the overall migration/upgrade process a new RC2 release has been made available (with go-live license). That’s the build I used today to upgrade from TFS 2010 SP1. The official installation guide is not yet available, so here are some tips to get you started in the right direction … At the customer I got 2 new servers at my disposal with a clean Windows Server 2012 R2 OS. The first server is used for the TFS Application and TFS Data Tier (Single Server Topology). The second one will be used as the TFS Build Server.

Before starting the installation of SQL Server 2014, I enabled the .NET 3.5 feature on Windows Server 2012 R2.

Required SQL Server features:

I always recommend to use dedicated domain service accounts for running SQL Server. In this case I decided to reuse the <TFSSERVICE> account. Note that all services are set to start automatically.

After successful installation of SQL Server 2014 I started the backup procedure on the old TFS 2010 environment and I copied all SQL .bak files to the new server for restoring all TFS related databases to the SQL Server 2014 instance.

The trial license is valid for 90 days and can be extended for 30 days. At this moment, there are no product keys available for the RC2 release.

No Build Configuration yet.

No SharePoint link (yet).

Verification …

Successful upgrade!

Once the TFS 2015 RTM release becomes available, it’s only a minor upgrade to move to the official RTM bits. Interested in the release notes for TFS 2015? Check out the official news update, posted in April 2015.

During a trial-migration of TFS, I typically prepare a lot of command-line tools to run some background update processes. Instead of writing little C# command-line applications in Visual Studio, I’m moving more and more away from Visual Studio and do stuff via PowerShell.

For a migration upgrade from TFS 2010 to TFS 2013, I have to deal with an update of the Build Controller to a new build machine/server. For a Team Project Collection of 100+ Team Projects and lots of build definitions, this is not something you want to do manually or delegate to all involved dev teams.

Instead of having to start from zero, I found this interesting post from Daniel Mann which does exactly what I want: updating the Build Controller from PowerShell via the TFS API. Except, it does it specifically for one dedicated Team Project.

So, the PowerShell script only needed a bit of tweaking to fetch all available Team Projects via the ListAllProjects method of the ICommonStructureService interface.

You may also use the Community TFS Build Manager (Visual Studio 2013 extension) to modify a number of Build Definitions in bulk, but for my migration scenario, I preferred to have a PowerShell script. Having this script also allows me to modify other settings in the Build Definitions … for example the Build Drop Location.

At several customers I have seen that some Virus Scan Systems (no names) have a serious negative impact on the performance of Team Foundation Server. Especially the Build Server may be an easy target for the Virus Scanning actions.

Here’s my latest recommendation I have sent to the Ops Team. Note that all involved servers run Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit) and the software is installed on the C drive. The TFS Application Tier also has WSS 3.0 (SP2) installed. Use at your own risk and good luck to get this approved by your Ops Team. Traditionally they handle the presumption of innocence principle: the virus scan is innocent until proven guilty!

Team Web Access (TWA) is a customizable Web interface that can access Team Foundation Server project data. It acts as a client of Team Foundation Server and provides most of the functionality available through Visual Studio Team Explorer. Users that connect to TFS via TWA should also have a valid Client Access License (CAL).

But … without having a CAL you may also create and view/modify work items that are created by you in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. To perform these tasks, you need only Team Web Access in Work Item Only View (WIOV) and the required permissions.

A user does not need a CAL or External Connector License to create new work items or to update work items that that same user has created. This exception applies only to work items related to defect filing or enhancement requests. However, a CAL is required when a user views or modifies a work item created by another user or interacts with Team Foundation Server in any other way.

Great, but how to make this work inside Team Foundation Server 2010?

Open up Team Foundation Administration Console and click on the Group Membership link that belongs to the Application Tier tab.

There you will find a TFS Security Group Work Item Only View Users. User accounts of users should be added to this group when these users should only have access to the Work Item Only View feature.

The actual downgrade of the permissions for these users is set through the Security Administration.

This TFS Security group is denied access to the full Web Access features.

Being part of this group will show you a limited version of Team Web Access where you will only be able to view and manage your own work items.

The TFS product team has done a great job in facilitating the installation/configuration of Team Foundation Server 2010, but don’t get too excited about all this. Some scenarios are still a real challenge to complete successfully and require a lot of planning and testing. This all depends on the fact if you are migrating from a previous Team Foundation Server (2005/2008) and what type of TFS topology you are looking for.

Easy

The easiest scenario is of course the TFS 2010 basic installation. A clean install of TFS 2010 on a client operating system (Vista / Windows 7). No hassle with SharePoint and SQL Reporting Services. This scenario can be done by every software developer and is perfect for having a local development playground for version control, work item management and build automation. You may be up-and-running in less than 1 hour! This is the only installation type where you don’t really need the famous TFS 2010 Installation Guide.

The other easy scenario is when you want to setup a clean Team Foundation Server 2010 (no upgrade) on a single server (Application Tier and Data Tier are installed on the single server). This is especially true if you are using all new installations of prerequisite software to host the configuration database, the report server, and the portal server (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0). This scenario involves already some familiarity with the other (optional) TFS Components: SharePoint and SQL Server Reporting Services. Read more about the Single-Server installation procedure.

Difficult

Selecting a (complex) multiple-server installation for Team Foundation Server should always be based on actual requirements instead of the fact that it’s just cool in trying to set this up. Don’t even think about this scenario when your potential users are lower than 250. At this time the complexity will automatically increase because you will probably also need to pass the security department for getting clearance in required service accounts for TFS and you will also need to work closely together with the SQL Server operations team / SharePoint operations team to work out a matching infrastructure for the SQL Server database instance, the SQL Server Report Server, the SQL Server Analysis Server and the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS or WSS). Most of the time they won’t give you immediately the infrastructure you really need. You will need to earn their respect and you will need to understand their overall policies. This is definitely the part where you won’t have full control of the situation. The bigger the company, the more time it will take to get agreement from all parties. Start as early as possible with these negotiations!

Let’s shift to upgrading from a previous Team Foundation Server (2005/2008) towards Team Foundation Server 2010. In this case you have two possible options: an in-place upgrade or a migration upgrade. The in-place upgrade to TFS 2010 will use the exact same set of hardware that the previous version was using. The migration upgrade allows you to move at the same time to new and better hardware for all TFS Components. You might also want to consider moving from 32 bit to 64 bit servers. An extra difficulty might come up when the previous TFS installation is still using a SQL Server 2005 data store because TFS 2010 doesn’t offer support anymore for SQL Server 2005. Before going down the path of an upgrade, be sure to carefully read the TFS 2010 Supplemental Upgrade Guide at Codeplex.

In my opinion it’s always better to go for the migration upgrade. On top of the benefits of new hardware for Team Foundation Server 2010 (always very welcome!), you will always have an easy fall back scenario when the migration upgrade didn’t succeed.

Team Projects should be split in different Team Project Collections that will match a specific division in the company.

Not all divisions can and want to upgrade at the same time due to different important release cycles. Risk and possible impact are a lot bigger when everything is upgraded at the same time.

Possible solution:

Perform a migration upgrade to TFS 2010.

Split upgraded Team Project Collection in new Team Project Collections for dedicated company divisions that were ready for the upgrade.

Divisions that were not ready for the upgrade can temporarily continue to work on the old TFS 2008 infrastructure.

To investigate a future import of remaining 2008 Team Projects for one or more dedicated divisions into TFS 2010, a trial import can be executed. During the trial period all actions to become TFS 2010 ready can be studied (builds, reports, portal, …).

Once the trials were successful, one or more (depending on the number of divisions left to move to TFS 2010) final imports can be performed to a new TFS 2010 Team Project Collection in combination with the rework necessary for bringing it fully operational on the new infrastructure.

After all remaining Team Projects are imported in TFS 2010, the TFS 2008 environment won’t be needed anymore.

Over time you will end up with a TFS 2010 environment with all desired Team Project Collections and you will have mitigated the risk of doing the one and only big-bang upgrade, forcing everyone to be ready at that particular time. One downside of the import command is that it does not upgrade reports or team project portals that are associated with the projects and databases to TFS 2010. That’s why it’s certainly a good practice to first perform an upgrade and to bring as many Team Projects back online in TFS 2010 after the initial upgrade. The original purpose of the import action is to consolidate different TFS environments into a single TFS instance.